Gauging Market Viability of New Services

Challenge/Issue: Our client regularly sold to both the state and local government markets. They had developed new service concepts which they wanted to sell to these markets: a help desk, remote monitoring of IT installations, and on-site maintenance and repair. They wanted to gauge market receptivity prior to introducing and promoting these services.

Approach: We conducted several focus groups to understand how our client’s prospects currently dealt with the services our client wished to introduce. Opinions about our client and its competitors were also garnered in these groups. The information gathered, as well as the hypotheses formed, were then fielded across a much broader audience via an in-depth telephone survey.

Results: Because our client’s service concepts were not all well-received, they had an opportunity to refine them to better meet their target audiences’ needs prior to introducing them. Additionally, the research revealed that certain target market segments were less predisposed toward outsourcing these types of services; we re-evaluated the segments against the offerings, and our client dropped some — but added others with far more propensity to buy. The client was able to make a smooth, profitable roll-out of a new service package.